Oren
I took her hand again and said, ‘Kissing would be a bad idea.’
She moved close to me. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Very.’
‘Why?’
First: because she was my sister. Second: because I planned to kill our mother and stepfather. Third: because if she sided with them, I would need to kill her too. I said, ‘Because I have a girlfriend.’ And that was fourth: a girlfriend who was sitting by her phone at the Red Roof Inn, waiting for my call.
‘I don’t care,’ Lexi said, and she tried to kiss me.
I pulled away and started walking back the way we’d come. ‘I need to make my call,’ I said.
She said, ‘I figured you wouldn’t kiss me.’
I asked, ‘Why did you figure that?’
She said, ‘Because you aren’t who you seem to be.’
I felt a shiver of fear. ‘Who am I then?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to figure out.’
‘If I was who I seemed to be, I would kiss you?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘You’re smarter than your mother,’ I said. Our mother – who thought I was dead and couldn’t see in me the ghost of the child I’d been.
She said, ‘So now we’ve established that I’m smart and you won’t kiss me.’
‘Smart can be dangerous,’ I said.
‘To me or to you?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Now who’s being sarcastic?’ she said. ‘Tell me who you really are.’
‘Tell you my story?’ I asked.
‘Unless you want to kiss me,’ she said.
‘It might be more than you can handle,’ I said.
‘The story or the kiss?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
She said, ‘I’ll risk the story.’
I said, ‘Once upon a time—’
‘Cut it out,’ she said.
I said, ‘It’s my story.’
‘Fine. Tell it.’
‘Once upon a time—’
A flashlight beam shined from the top of the hill between the gate and the house, and a man’s voice called out, ‘Who’s there?’
‘Damn it,’ Lexi said.
The flashlight beam swung toward us. ‘Who’s there?’ the man asked again. It was Tilson.
Lexi stepped toward the gate and said, ‘It’s me.’
Tilson came down the hill toward the road, the flashlight shining on the driveway. ‘What you do there, Miss Lexi?’ he asked. ‘Who you with?’
I said to her, ‘I need to make my phone call.’
She squeezed my hand. ‘Get close to the bridge.’
Tilson opened the gate and shined his light at her face, then mine. ‘Who that you with, Miss Lexi?’ He held the light on me.
‘What are you doing here?’ Lexi asked him.
‘Watching the poultry pen,’ he said.
‘For what?’ Lexi asked. ‘All the chickens are dead.’
‘Wouldn’t a been if I been watching right,’ he said. ‘Don’t want that spreading.’ He kept the beam on me until I turned away and walked down the road.